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All eyes are now on February’s summit in Rome

November 22, 2018

Last week’s meeting of the US Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) in Baltimore was almost derailed after the Vatican issued a directive prohibiting votes on two key agenda items. Yet despite the meeting’s shortcomings, Cardinal Daniel DiNardo insisted it was “a sign of hope” for him. The gathering also raised further questions about whether Cardinal

The suffering poet who sighed for lost Edens

November 22, 2018

The Letters of Sylvia Plath: Volume II Edited by Peter Steinberg and Karen Krull, Faber and Faber, 1,025pp, £35/$35 Since her suicide in the winter of early 1963, Sylvia Plath has been squabbled over by feminists who claim her as a martyr to their cause, literary critics who see her as one of the most

As frustrated Catholics call for the nuclear option, a diplomat urges prudence

November 22, 2018

As the abuse crisis deepens and Church officials struggle to reassure laity that they are taking their grievances seriously, some social media users have proposed a radical solution of their own. They’re urging President Donald Trump to sever diplomatic ties with the Holy See. The argument stems from widespread claims – particularly those stemming from

Benedictines in the age of Facebook

November 22, 2018

Monasticism Today By various authors, Buckfast Abbey, 112pp, £10/$13 (available from buckfast.org.uk) Buckfast Abbey, the Benedictine monastery in the west of England, surely has never looked so resplendent. Rebuilt a century ago largely by French and German monks on the site of the original foundation, it has been improved over the past decade in readiness

Even in exile, Syriac Orthodox Christians remain divided

November 22, 2018

It is cold and gloomy when I ask one of the Syriac Orthodox youths in the Swedish city of Södertälje to describe to me what the past year has been like. “Dark, very dark,” he replies. But he is not referring to the severe persecution of his people – a Christian ethnic group indigenous to

How London greeted Handel’s astonishing gifts

November 22, 2018

Handel in London by Jane Glover, Macmillan, 448pp, £25, $29.95 To begin on a carping note, Jane Glover’s subtitle, The Making of a Genius, surely claims too much for London. Handel’s genius had been blazingly evident before he ever thought of working in England. In particular, during his years in Italy (1706-10) he had stunned

The legalisation of abortion may force a bishop to abdicate as prince

November 22, 2018

One of Europe’s strangest Church-state relationships may soon come to an end if a Catholic bishop is forced to abdicate as co-prince of Andorra in a dispute over abortion. The Diari d’Andorra daily said the warning had been issued by the Pope in a telephone conversation with the principality’s chief executive, Antoni Martí, as his

Why ‘A Dance to the Music of Time’ features little Catholicism but a lot of mumbo-jumbo

November 22, 2018

For many, myself among them, Evelyn Waugh, Graham Greene and Anthony Powell were the outstanding English novelists of the middle decades of the 20th century, and I have been reading and re-reading them since I was a schoolboy more than 60 years ago. There aren’t many novelists one doesn’t tire of, but repeatedly returns to.